While I don’t have a regular nickname, I started calling myself “Frank” when a National Guard Captain (Little Orphan Annie) couldn’t remember my real name.
Every time I had to interact with LOA, he’d ask me my name. After a few times of answering with my real name and LOA forgetting it within hours, I answered him one time with “Frank”. He got a strange look on his face as if he knew that I was fucking with him, but he couldn’t call me out without losing face, but he was able to remember it.
Some time later LOA asked Top where “Frank” was. Top, being the sweet soul that he is, asked LOA quite pointedly who Frank was, as there was no one by that name in the unit.
LOA replied, “Frank- you know, that photographer.” Top, ever the wise one, played it straight and sent someone to find me.
Whenever I have to visit that unit, I’m known as Frank. The guys who aren’t in on the joke are quite confused by it.
FTR, I’m not in the Guard, but had to cover a local unit for my newspaper as they trained at Camp Shelby before their deployment. I spent a week with them on base and had a blast. LOA is still clueless.
I’ve had to suffer “fusspot” when I was a kid, which for some bizarre reason I adopted very proudly as a badge of honour. I used to introduce myself as Firstname Fusspot Lastname.
I also got the nickname “anus” from a - supposed - friend, because, well, my name is that without the S and he thought it was hilarious.
When I started at the company that I’m with now, there was a guy that loved to give all the FNGs nicknames. He had trouble with me though and went through several including ‘Lassie’ and ‘Cheetah’. The former was discarded because Lassie is female and I’m not. The latter was for the monkey in Tarzan despite sounding cool.
The winner turned out to be ‘Lonzo’. It was a shortened version of Corlonzo which was supposed to be my gangster name. Don’t ask. For whatever reason, Lonzo stuck and I endured it for almost a year before the novelty wore off for everyone. Every once in awhile someone dusts it off for a day or two.
Several people have (independantly) given me nicknames that have the word ‘obvious’ in them, like Obviousman or Mr. Obvious. But not for the obvious reason–I don’t point out things that are already obvious to other people.
Have you ever finally understood something and then felt that it seemed like it should have been obvious? Well, I engender that feeling in people, sometimes. I seem to have a knack for helping people find solutions to their problems or help them understand something that seemed obtuse in such a way that it makes the answer seem obvious in hindsight.
My first name is Alexander, which led to AZ, which led to Aze. My parents and sister still use these quite a lot.
In college the one I liked best was Elvis because of my then-long sideburns. It was just starting to catch on, too, when another friend dubbed me Cliff, after the Cheers character. I managed to expand it to Cliffy, and there are still real life friends who call me that almost without exception.
When you’re born with a headful of thick curly hair and your mother is crazy enough to name you Isabelle… it’s only a matter of time before someone calls you “Frizzy”. sigh
Anyone who tries that more than once gets The Look… and if that doesn’t work, it’s swiftly followed by The Swift Smack to the Back of the Head.
Beyond that, I don’t really have any nicknames. Based on what I’ve seen so far in this thread, I should probably be grateful.
I’ve had someone basically decide in high school that they were going to give me a new nickname every week. And that person was the captain of the football team while I was just a lowly quiet and shy sophomore. And so then the next natural progression was that the entire football team had to yell my name as loud as possible if they ever saw me anywhere in the halls.
It wasn’t too malicious, and actually kinda amusing in the long run.
I believe most of the nicknames were just bastardizations or variations on my current nickname- “Roosh”. I believe their favorite was screaming “ROOSH-DAWG!” at the top of their lungs if they saw me. It seemed that people then just started to try to vary it up, so i’ve heard plenty of variations of Roosh____. Since then, my actual friends tended to just shorten it to “Roosh” and that’s pretty much the name I go by even though I love my name, I like the nickname well enough as well.
My name IRL is Judy, so my family nickname from a very, very young age was Joodle, which became Joodle McDoodle, or sometimes Ms. McDoodle. My sister and her husband (who I’ve known since I was 12, more than 40 years ago) still call me Joodle or Dr. McDoodle (I have a PhD). I like it, but just from them.
The one constant nick since grade school is always “Stud” - probably not for any reason you are thinking of. Another is "Big “first name)”, cause I’m kinda tall. And when I was younger and my hair was redder and less grey, “Red” was always a creative one.
In law school first year, all of a sudden the rest of the class was calling me “the judge.” I had no idea why. Longish story, but later that year someone informed me our Civ Pro prof hung it on me one day when he called on me and I tried to respond. Of course, I was so stoned at the time I didn’t even remember it.
JK. Or Jenna. Both created by my father. There are others that one person may call me, but those I think are inside jokes or stories. JK and/or Jenna are the main stream.
“Wong Ho!” - very brief relationship with a Vietnamese girl. She would call me this when we made love. Never did figure out what it meant in Vietnamese.
My family does a lot of nicknames. Mine included Abflabfleafly which was then shortened to Abflab or Abflea. Why? I don’t know. My brother’s name is Nicholas which sometimes became Nickle-pickle. And now I frequently call him Pickle. I also address him as Thing but I don’t remember where that came from.
My Mom calls me Nanner Peel, Missy Mouse, and Munchkin. Mud Puppy and Swamp Thing came along in high school because of my last name. Naturally I didn’t like either of those. At one job, I was called A.G., and my ex husband called me Boo, and Pima (pain in my ass). I don’t really have a nickname right now.
